Beauty 4 Ashes: Initial Canvasses {DIY Art}

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Initial Canvasses {DIY Art}

It's Day 8 of my cheap-and-easy DIY Art Series!

Today's art is another easy canvas-painting idea that you've seen in our classroom.

During the first week of school, and needing more art on the walls, I remembered an idea I'd seen on Pinterest where you tape your child's name on a piece of paper then have them paint over it. When the paint is dry, remove the tape to reveal the name in clean, crisp white letters.

Totally awesome idea, right? Well, without really thinking it through, I started in on letting the boys do just that earlier in the summer. The problem I ran into right away was the example child's name is LILY. My oldest is JONATHAN.

Who gives their kids such long names anyway? And how do you tape down curvy letters???

This time, however, I was ready with just ONE letter per child. The curvy letters aren't perfect, but hello, it's a kid's art project! Perfection would be so boring.

Since my kids are pretty young and I didn't want brown canvasses, I only gave them one color at a time, and only a small sploch of it. They painted to their heart's content. My kids preferred paint brushes to fingers (not me!!!), and the only help I gave them was asking them to stop blending (no brown!) and helping them get every white spot on the canvas.

We used tempura paints, by the way. Always what I used in my classroom when I was a real teacher. This project would be super fun for a kid's room, either their initials, their whole name on a larger canvas, or one canvas per letter to spell their name! Or use colors in your decor and paint your last name and hang the canvas or canvasses in your living room or entry! Try it! It's so fun!